In the landscape of the very rich and the very famous, at a Connecticut finishing school in the early 1940s, four young women of very different backgrounds first meet. They are the debutantes. Chrissy Marlowe, child victim of a stormy custody battle, already worht millions; Maeve O'Connor, talented daughter of a mad literary giant, tortured by a secret from her deep, dark past; Sara Gold, scion of a prominent New YOork family, obsessed with her own Jewishness and a hatred for her father; and Marlena Williams, Sara's poor cousin from the South, swept into the circle of the three northern rich girls. Spanning four decades, with forays into each young woman's history, The Debutantes is the story of the tempestuous, often tortured lives of these poor little rich girls.